Loving Can Hurt Sometimes
by Jmags-WriterofAwesomeness
Summary: Even the strongest of love has its challenges, especially when FitzSimmons is involved. When Jemma's exoplanetary story reveals a new love interest, how do they deal with the fallout? A two-shot that starts after the events of 3x05 (including mentions of moments from 3x08).
1. Chapter 1

_So this was an idea that I came up with after the fallout of 3x05. I feel like everyone thinks Fitz is a saint for being such a good-natured, selfless person, which he pretty much is lol. But I wanted to explore a more painful, bitter, secret side of him in this two-shot. He is only human, after all, and he is bound to have some not-so-nice thoughts initially about possibly losing the woman he loves unconditionally to another man. So I hope you all enjoy my short little interpretation of Fitz's and Jemma's viewpoints after Jemma tells Fitz her story._

* * *

 _Loving can hurt, loving can hurt sometimes._

 _But it is the only thing that I know._

While Fitz worked on the portal simulations, not a minute passed by when his heart wasn't aching. It was a dull pain, a mild irritant that he put aside for later but it would always linger there, just waiting for the opportunity to grow stronger and more intense. And eventually, it did.

It had first been planted there by Simmons, of course; he had thought that the two of them were making progress before she told him about Will. So many emotions and gut-reaction thoughts, initial inklings that he had chosen to keep to himself, had flooded his mind as Jemma reflected back fondly on the time she had spent on the alien planet with him.

A part of him was jealous, though he would never openly admit that to her. Of course she just had to fall for the guy who was his exact opposite: swarthy, muscular, "not very sciency," as he remembered her quoting in her play-by-play account of the last six months. How was he supposed to compete with that? She had never seen him as anything more than a friend until he went to finish off the Inhuman war with Coulson and Mack, and even that could've just been said in the heat of the moment, when she was concerned about him going out into the field.

He knew that he had always loved his best friend, but he didn't realize the depth of his love for her until she jumped out of the plane after contracting the Chiutari virus. Out of all the heart-stopping, frozen-in-fear moments that Fitz had experienced during his time working for Coulson, that one had to be by far one of the most heart-wrenching ones of all. Well, besides Simmons being sucked up by the monolith and him finding the ancient scroll that told him the true purpose of the monolith: "death."

All of the times where he faced the very real possibility that he would have to live without her were without a doubt in his mind the worst moments of his life. If he had to choose between losing Jemma and going through the TAHITI project to erase the bad memories or keeping the tumultuous relationship between the two of them despite the hardships they had been through, he would've chosen the latter in a heartbeat; despite all of the physical and emotional trauma the two of them had gone through since joining Coulson's team, it had just brought them closer than ever before in the end.

 _When it gets hard  
You know it can get hard sometimes  
It is the only thing that makes us feel alive_

And the worst part was that no matter how hard he tried, Fitz couldn't hate Will; he had saved Jemma's life, after all, and he had treated her with the respect and tenderness that she so rightly deserved. How could he find it in himself to disapprove of the man that was the very reason that Jemma was still alive today, warm-blooded and breathing beside him as they glossed over pages of calculations together? No amount of jealousy and bitterness in him would ever affect his decision to save Will for Jemma- not only because it was the right thing to do, but because it would make Jemma happy.

And all Fitz ever wanted for Jemma, for himself, was for her to be happy, gradually immersing herself back into science again with a clear conscious and with the man she loved at her side...even if that man just so happened to be Will and not Fitz.

However, his hidden heartache became increasingly worse while Hunter was constantly hanging around the lab, and being punished by Coulson for sacrificing Andrew just to get a shot at Ward was clearly making the Brit more annoying than usual. As much as Fitz liked the company, he wasn't exactly pleased to hear Hunter echoing the faint slivers of doubt that already existed in his mind.

He wasn't going to lie- losing Simmons to another guy had suddenly become more painful than he ever could've imagined. Seeing the pictures of Will and Simmons on her phone had brought back the whisper of an old mentality that he hadn't thought about since he was younger, when being smart and quiet had ultimately put him in the "loser" category in school. He had always been the stereotypical nerd in high school and at the Academy, the guy that always got friendzoned because he was "too nice," or "too awkward," or whatever other pathetic excuses his past short-lived crushes had made back in the day. But those were just temporary, flitting specks in the corner of his mind that didn't matter to him at all. And after all of those ridiculous, meaningless crushes had passed, it was Jemma who was reassuring him that those girls were missing out, that any girl would be lucky to date him.

He knew this one was real, this all-consuming, uncontrollable, tender love that he had for Jemma, and for the longest time, he had hoped someday that his feelings for her would be requited. It was like a dream come true when she had suggested the possibility of an actual _romantic_ relationship occurring between them, and he swore that his heart had danced briefly in his chest when he finally worked up the courage to ask her out on a date and she had said yes.

But then, she had disappeared. And then she so happened to fall in love with another guy on another planet while she was gone. Once again, he was the nerd that never got the girl.

And ever since their first date, after she had cried on his shoulder while he stroked her hair and whispered sweet nothings into her ear, his heart had refused to dance again.

" _Maybe I was destined to forever fall in love with people I couldn't have. Maybe there's a whole assortment of impossible people waiting for me to find them. Waiting to make me feel the same impossibility over and over again."_

* * *

 _A/N: The first two quotes were from "Photograph" by Ed Sheeran and the third one is from a book that I don't know the name of, but I found the quote online and thought it would fit nicely into here :)_

 _Also, this is describing the moments before Fitz hears Simmons's admittance of her feelings for him in 3x07, if anyone noticed that I hadn't put that tidbit in there. But it just might come up in Simmons's point of view next, who knows ;)_


	2. Chapter 2

_This originally was supposed to be a POV after 3x05, but after last night's episode I really couldn't help but set her train of thoughts after 3x08. I was going to write a oneshot about the aftermath of the kiss anyway (sorry, spoiler alert!), but I decided to combine the two instead in order to avoid repetition. So, more accurately, here's Jemma POV about the whole situation :) Enjoy!_

* * *

Sleep did not come easily to her that night; it was just too hard for her to process everything that had transpired over the past couple of weeks. Everything had just completely spun out of control after she and Fitz had started looking for Will: Dr. Garner had turned out to be the Inhuman-killing machine Lash that everyone had been hunting for (not to mention that May now appeared to be more like a shell of herself because of it), and now Hydra was suddenly creating an Inhuman army, a powerful one, that potentially had something to do with the monolith.

The horror on hers and Fitz's faces when they made the shocking discovery would most likely set the precedent for days to come- if she thought things were bad now, they were about to get much, much worse. Ward and Gideon Malick were still out there, and who knew what kind of intel Malick was able to swindle out of Rosalind Price. As soon as they thought they had cut off the head of Hydra, two heads in the form of Ward and Gideon had grown back, more menacing and dangerous than ever before.

And if Hydra was using the monolith for some higher purpose, what if they just so happened to bring Death back, if it even existed at all? What kind of havoc could that potentially wreck? A sudden sinking feeling formed in the pit of her stomach, riding along with a wave of terrified nausea as she came across a devastating realization: the possibility that someone on the base wouldn't make it out of this alive. After learning about this new information, coupled with the fact that Ward was hell-bent for revenge and Malick had some serious driving power within the President's office and within Hydra, the team knew there was no way the two of them were going to stop fighting for what they wanted until they both either died themselves or they took the life (or lives) of some of the people she cared about most.

This discovery had catapulted her into a state of uneasiness, leaving in extreme ambiguity what the future held for her and Will and for her and Fitz. Everything she had grown to know about Will from the time they had spent together on the planet was now held hostage by her snowballing thoughts. He had seemed so genuine then, the perfect exemplar of a man grieving for the loss of his friends and holding on to every chance he had for surviving the unknown. He had cared for her, showed her hope when her world had come crashing down around her, and was pretty much the reason she was alive and back on Coulson's base today.

But despite all of this...what if it had somehow all been an act? What if Death had gotten into Will's head without him even knowing it, whether or not the descent into madness started before she met him or after she had deserted him for Fitz? Or worst of all, what if Will had been working with Hydra this whole time, hiding his true intentions while simultaneously trying to create a new life with her when they thought they would be stuck there forever?

Her worries were silly, she thought. She was good at reading people. She didn't have a Ph.D. in psychology, but she at least thought she was able to observe a person's behavior enough over time to know whether someone was being honest or not. And yet despite her carefully-catalogued scientific observations, tidbits that memorized every idiosyncrasy of a companion's well-being, a mountain of lies and treachery lying around every corner always seemed to trip her up, sending her tumbling back to square one, questioning everything she ever knew about her companion from outer space.

Did Will really ever love her? Or was it all just...

Jemma winced, tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. Thinking of Will as a sacrifice, a pawn in Hydra's sadistic game to conquer the world, or anything else horrible about him shattered her heart. As much history as she and Fitz had with each other, she couldn't lie to her best friend when she had told him that she also loved Will. Whether it was worth bringing him back to Earth now despite the risk of the wraths of Death and Hydra following suit was a question that was up for Coulson and everyone else to answer now.

And Fitz...oh god, Fitz. The look of devastation, mixed with the indescribable combination of desperation and longing on his face broke her. He thought the two of them were cursed, for god's sake! He had suddenly thrown all logical thinking to the wind and was now blaming the cosmos for keeping them apart. Never one to believe in commandeering higher powers until Death came along, she just chalked it up to bad timing and unfortunate circumstances. Whether or not she would go so far as to call it a "curse" would require a lot of convincing on Fitz's part in the future.

His pain, his burden, had suddenly become hers too. The hurt feelings were now out in the open, floating around them, practically suffocating them in the process. They were suffering together, torn asunder by the elephant in the room: her feelings for Will.

But if she had told anyone that she had expected Fitz to kiss her like he did earlier that day...it would've been a complete, boldfaced lie.

For someone who had survived the impossible, preparing herself in the meantime for any situation that she may tumble into at any moment, his actions had thrown her completely off-guard. She had expected the yelling, the crying, the frustration and anger hurling through the air as they expressed their deepest thoughts and fears to each other about the situation; those expectations were practically a given. But the way he had _chosen_ to express his feelings for her, grabbing her and kissing her as if it was the first and last time he would ever be able to do so, was unexpected- and also revealing in more ways than one.

She had secretly hoped at first that the kissing would be weird, like Luke and Leia had felt after they found out they were siblings. And that's what their relationship had been like before joining Coulson's team, full of bickering and teasing and having fun working together as partners and platonic friends. But so much had happened between them since then that once the kissing happened...there was no going back. They had to either act on their feelings or ignore them altogether.

What she didn't expect though was how _right_ everything had felt in that moment, like this was supposed to happen all along. Him pulling her closer as she had stroked the stubble on his face, memorizing the way his lips molded against hers and how their bodies locked together as if they were missing pieces to a puzzle they had taken forever to solve...it was nice. Much nicer than she had ever expected it to feel.

It had felt like home, a place where she was always meant to be. There was no doubt about that in her mind. It almost felt as natural as their bickering and bantering routine they had developed over the years.

She had never even thought to explore that side of their relationship until now, and after such an intense moment of passion that came out of nowhere...she found herself wanting more, more of the Leo Fitz that she had come to know and love unconditionally. If she couldn't imagine Fitz being with anyone else but her, she couldn't possibly imagine what was going through Fitz's mind right now, mulling painfully over the fact that he might just lose her to another man.

It was an impossible situation, falling for two men who had both moved heaven and earth to keep her alive and safe. What was one to do in this situation?

Being with Will was certainly an adventure. It was passionate, visceral, a stereotypical outer space-romance that one could usually only witness in movies. They were a team; it was them against the dark, evil planet that threatened their very existence every second of the day. It was built upon a fire that was fueled by her despair of possibly never being able to return to Earth again, leaving Fitz and everything she held dear behind that damned moving portal that brought her there in the first place. If the two of them had met on Earth under different circumstances, she probably wouldn't have even cast an eye on him. When it comes to love, however, circumstance is everything.

Could she go on without Will? Probably. Will meant a lot to her, but he wasn't her best friend.

On the other hand, if something else were to happen to Fitz again after everything they had been through together...she didn't know what she would do. She had never imagined a life without Fitz before being sent to another planet and she hoped to the heavens they wouldn't be separated for that long ever again. Even when they were just friends and nothing more, she always imagined that they would stay close, gabbing about their children and their careers after they were done with SHIELD.

She had almost lost him once, which lead up to the nine longest days of her life. And then she almost lost him again, with the portal almost destroying any chance of the life they could've had together. There was no way in hell that she would let him slip away again now.

With Will, she had created a life for both of them. With Fitz, she was surrounded by whispers of a future life with him, with that hope possessing the ability to be destroyed at any moment.

Will was temporary, now coalesced with Inhumans and Hydra, but Fitz was forever. Well, for the time being he was.

If she didn't lose him to this love triangle first. Or to Hydra, or to the Inhuman army, or to anyone who had a score to settle with SHIELD.

And with this rationalization, she finally stumbled upon the answer that she had been looking for all along.

* * *

"Jemma, what is there to talk about? You have to save Will, I know. But I can't help you find him anymore, not with the information we just learned about Hydra."

"And I'm not forcing you to help me, I swear! I just want you to understand that-"

"What if we do succeed in opening the portal?!" Fitz yelled, turning to face her as he continued to descend into his despair. "You told me about Death yourself. What if it's actually an Inhuman? What if it tries to come after you again, in the form of Will to somehow convince you to go back to that bloody planet?"

He sniffed as he hung his head, pushing himself against his bedroom desk while his knuckles turned white from gripping its corners so hard. "The universe may want us apart, and I can accept that if it means that you're safe again. I'm not going to put you in danger like that; the bloody monolith has brought us nothing but pain and suffering!"

"My god, Fitz, we are not cursed!" Jemma shouted, on the verge of screaming in frustration. When Fitz plummeted into one of his tirades, it was incredibly difficult to snap him out of his rage. "By working together, by _being_ together, we just made one of the most important discoveries that Coulson could had ever asked for. That doesn't sound like a bloody curse to me!"

"Don't try to make me feel better about this, Simmons," Fitz snapped. "When Will comes back, against all odds he'll most likely be fine and you'll probably go running back into his arms and live happily ever after. The end. Astronaut hero man gets the girl."

"Don't you dare start this again, Fitz! You have proved many times that you are just as much as a hero as Will is!" Jemma raged back. "I don't even know what Will is anymore! Do you really think all of this Hydra crap hasn't had me thinking too?! How could you possibly think I'd choose to be with a man who I'd only known for six months, who could very well be dead or turned evil now, over a guy that I've spent almost half of my life with?"

Her voice faded to almost a wobbly whisper during the second half of her last sentence. "I would do _anything_ to take back everything I've done to you, even if some of what happened wasn't my fault."

Fitz wiped the streams of tears from his face with the back of his hand and turned to look at her with widened eyes. "Even with Will? And working undercover in Hydra?"

"Yes." She took a cautious step towards him. "Every last bit of it."

"Simmons, I'm not going to make you choose between me and him," he demanded, crossing his arms across his chest. "Do whatever brings you happiness in the end. That's all I ever wanted for you."

Was he even hearing a word she was saying? His incomprehension of her words was really starting to piss her off. "And all I ever wanted was you!" she blurted out in her frustration.

Silence washed over the two of them as Fitz took a deep breath, trying to rid himself of the intensity of the emotions flowing through his veins. "It was always you, Fitz," she said softly, reaching forward to grasp his arm with both of her hands. "I've made my choice."

Fitz blinked as he attempted to take in everything she was saying. She wanted him over Will? How? "Are...are you sure about this?" he asked, struggling to get the words out of his mouth.

That was definitely the last straw for Jemma. She rolled her eyes. "Oh, for crying out loud," she muttered angrily, grabbing the sides of his face and smashing her lips against his without warning.

He squeaked in surprise but recovered quickly, breathing deeply through his nose as he wrapped his arms around her and gripped her tightly in his embrace. There was nothing about the kiss that was tender this time, as it was filled with the pent-up passion, longing, and frustration that had been building up between them for years. But the last time this happened, he had pulled away from her, and she was not going to let that happen again this time.

In the heat of the moment Fitz and Simmons almost lost their balance, propelling Fitz back against his desk again, but neither of them seemed to notice. For over a minute they just stood there, plastering each other with rough, lustful kisses as their anger at each other slowly started to diffuse. Only when both of them began to gasp for air did they break apart, staring at each other with intense emotion. "Was that enough to convince you?" she whispered breathlessly, a small smile spreading on her swollen lips.

He chuckled softly, his cheeks turning pink as he leaned his forehead against hers. "Yeah, er, I think so," he breathed back as he brushed a strand of hair from her face, tucking it gently behind her ear.

Jemma took a moment to steady herself (by now, it seemed like the world was spinning wildly around her), clutching the back of his neck, and in doing so she almost neglected what Fitz said next. "I'm scared," he whispered, and she could see the tears forming in his bright blue eyes.

She unsuccessfully held back a sob, her grip instinctively tightening on the back of his neck. "I'm scared too," she whimpered as she kissed him gently before enveloping him into a tight hug.

They stayed there intertwined for a bit as their tears soaked the collars of their shirts. Jemma buried her nose in the crook of his neck and inhaled deeply, and the familiarity of his cologne calmed her instantly as she took in one last shuddery breath. Here was where they were meant to be, and this was where she belonged: home.

"Stay with me tonight," he begged of her, his voice muffled in her sweater. "I don't think I can ever let you go after this."

A watery, relieved laugh erupted from Jemma as they refused to unlock themselves from their embrace. "Of course."

* * *

 _Well, that was it! I hope you liked it! I know they already did the angry-rough kissing thing in last night's episode, but I just thought the whole concept was so damn hot and sensual that I had to add it in again. But seriously, the way Fitz grabbed her though...my god. Wasn't expecting him to make the first move at all and it was every bit as amazing as it was poignant and painful. Also, I'm thinking about rewriting Fitz's POV and reposting it sometime in the near future due to possible continuity issues, so look out for that as well if you're planning on reading the story again._

 _By the way, if anyone is wondering what happened to my other FitzSimmons story, I'm still writing it, I swear! Got half of it done already and hopefully it'll be up sometime soon. Now excuse as I watch those two kisses over...and over...and over again x)_


End file.
